Zukunftszeugen III - Robert Wilson Index Interview Transcript 1 Transcript 2 Transcript 3 Transcript 4

				3. Project: Life in the 21st Century Could you describe how you approach the future in the project "Life in the 21st Century?" How do you develop an idea about life in the 21st century? Last year I had a conference and we had thirty or forty scholars coming in internationally and then integrated with another thirty or forty interns, young people. There is a seventeen year old boy from the Philippines, a seventeen year old boy who is American Native Indian. A housewife from New Jersey. It's a whole mix of people, not just scholars. We also had an eight year old boy from Geneva. And actually he was very interesting after two days of scholars discussing the life sciences of 21st century, most people were quite pessimistic. And I asked Adrian, the 8 year old boy, what do you think it's going to be like in the 21st century? And he said: Oh it's going to be great, it's going to be wonderful. And I asked why? An he said: Because there are going to be so many computers! It's going to be so exciting. So this is a completely different point of view from an 8 year old kid. But how do you integrate complex concepts? Do you for example start with the question "What is sustainability?" and then try to translate the answer into visions and sounds? I told everybody: Take a filing card ten centimeters by seven centimeters. And write on the card some things you are concerned about and you would like us to discuss. And then I took all these cards and put them on a wall. And we all went up and read them. And I said: Wow, that's almost already a book or a script. And than I made a structure. A formal classical structure. I said OK, this work is going to be a theater work, maybe it is going to be an Opera in the Latin sense - "opus," - a work. And I took a classical structure. Act one, two, three, four. And I said I have three themes: ABC. So, Act one will have A and B. Act two will have C and A. And Act three will have B and C and Act four will have ABC together. So these are all the possible combinations you can have of these three themes ABC. And I said in between these 4 acts will be five Interlude scenes. I call them "Knee Plays." A knee is a joint that links two elements. That will be five of them. They go through all the acts. And then I went through it and put times. So the Knee Plays will be four minutes five seconds. Act one scene A will be twenty minutes. B will be twenty-one minutes. I put time in the structure. About four hours - well maybe four hours and twenty-four minutes. So that was an abstract form, but it was a structure. Once I had the time-space-structure than I could fill it in. Time and space - this is how my work is constructed. Filling it in - this is what are you doing this year? Yes, this year I am going to stage a work based on that form. And it will be staged silently. This is what we will do this year. Based on this silent staging which will be videotaped. Having in mind this content from the workshop last year on the form and structure. I will then approach a writer or various writers to begin to fill in the visual book. And I will then ask the composer to compose music. Usually what one does is one starts with the word. And writes a word and then figures out how to stage the peace by reading the text. But I find that boring. Because what happens is that the visual book becomes decoration for the text. And here the visual book can be first. So it is architectural, it has its own structure of time and space, it can be independent. And it can be enriched when you put the text to it. Something else happens by the mixing of the two. The primary way we are related to each other is through our eyes and our ears. So often in theater it's so terrible because what we see is only there to illustrate or decorate what we are hearing. We call it "stage decoration." You go to school and learn to be a "stage decorator." For me that is horrible. What we see should be as important as what we hear. The lord gave us eyes and gave us ears. And that is how we have understanding, how we relate to one another. I see you now and I hear what you say and it's part of a language. I make a language that is visual. I think that is a reason why my work is seen a lot internationally. Because there is always a visual book, that can stand on its own, that is structured. We don't need necessarily to have a text. It is an international language. Could you describe some current trends you see in the world and then explain how they get into your work in this project? Well, one of the people who was with us last summer was a man named Dr. Daniel Stern, a psychiatrist. Now he teaches in Geneva. And he has made many experiments with babies, filming mothers and babies, saying there is a language. Often the body is moving faster than we think. Behavior patterns are happening that we are unaware of. I first became interested in Stern's work when he made 50 films of mothers picking up babies in a natural situation. The mother would cry, reach for the baby, pick up the baby and comfort the baby. And looked at it twenty-four frames per second. In eight out of ten cases the initial reaction of the mother is: The mother is lunging at the child. The child says "wua." Is reacting. Next two or three frames, the mother is doing something else. Next two or three frames something else again. And again. So that in one second of time it is very very complex what is happening between the mother and the child. Now the mother when she sees the film is shocked, is horrified, is terrified. She said: But I love my child. And we see her lunging at the child. So there is a language there and there are patterns. So this is what fascinates me. That this language maybe becomes more readable or understandable. That's why I start with a silent work. It doesn't have really anything to do with psychology but it has something more to do with the way of looking. And taking time to see something. TOP
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